Ensemble Odyssee & Andrea Friggi - Gaetano Veneziano: In Officio Defunctorum - Nocturns For The Dead (2015)

Among the many students in search of a good musical education, a certain Gaetano Veneziano moved to Naples, then among the hotbeds of musical life in 17th c. Europe, from his native Apulia at age ten to study in one its cities four music conservatoires. In addition to a Miserere for 4 voices and a Sinfonia Quarta by his contemporary A. Scarlatti, this Pan Classics release presents three late 17th c. In Officio Defunctorum (part of the normal repertoire of every church and performed every time a nobleman died), the texts being set to music by this imaginative, late-Renaissance Italian composer.